


Wrinkles

by ladygray99



Series: Vignettes [9]
Category: Numb3rs
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-07
Updated: 2010-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 02:16:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygray99/pseuds/ladygray99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alan and Colby have a chat over laundry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrinkles

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the Vignettes 'verse after Domestic Bliss.

  
Colby felt an almost meditative peace as he glided the iron over his laundry his mind wandering to no place special.  Alan half whistled a tune that was probably popular a decade before Colby was born as he piled sheets into the washer.

Colby folded the neatly pressed shirt then plucked the next item from his basket.

"You iron your shorts?"

Colby's head popped up. "What?"

Alan gestured to the ironing board. "You iron your shorts?" He asked again.

Colby looked down.  Yes he was indeed ironing his boxers.  Colby shrugged. "Had a base commander with a bit of a screw loose. Liked to do inspections at three in the morning. Wrinkled shorts earned you push-ups. Guess it kinda became habit."

Alan blinked a few times and shook his head. "I knew there was a reason I burned my draft card." He mumbled.

Colby froze. "You...What?" He couldn't have heard right "You burned your draft card?"

"Well I was hardly the first."

Colby's jaw dropped open. No Granger in history had been drafted.  There was no need. Volunteers or career military the lot of them, but even with out that there was no way in hell one of them would have burned their draft card.  The thought wouldn't have even processed.

Colby shook his head and quickly lifted the iron off his shorts before he burned through them.

"What...what happened?" Colby asked.

"What do you mean what happened?"

"Well I think it's a federal offence for one."

Alan shrugged. "I burnt it.  I wrote a very polite letter telling them I burned it and my reasons why, and two weeks later I got a new one in the mail.  It was very anti-climatic I must say.  Though apparently they also opened an FBI file on me.  Go figure."

Colby was still trying to process how casual Alan was about an act that went against every inch of Colby's upbringing.  
   
"It was a very different time Colby." Alan said obviously reading the shock on Colby's face. "I had a wife, a young son and the thought of fighting a war I was fundamentally against just really didn't appeal."

"Alan, they wouldn't have drafted you anyways. You were head of household with a kid. 3-A."

"I was also 4-F.  Early onset arthritis in both hands. That wasn't the point."

"Then..." Colby shook his head feeling very confused.

"I'd had a son, Colby. A son."  Alan leaned heavily on the washing machine. "The TV had been on in the maternity ward waiting room, and it was the first pictures of flag covered coffins being loaded off planes and the doctor came in and said 'it's a boy' and I very quickly came to the conclusion that the only uniform I ever wanted to see him in would say Dodgers on the front and have his name on the back." Alan looked over to Colby. "You've got to understand there were no other Eppes.  My own father had been dead five years and he'd been the only one to get out of Europe. It was me and Donnie and I was not about ready to see him shipped off somewhere and killed for some generals folly. So I burned my draft card and I protest and was investigated and arrested three times and..."

"You were arrested?!"

"Didn't Donnie tell you?  You should look at my file, it's an interesting read, a good four inches thick.  Donnie's horribly embarrassed by the whole thing but I was doing it for him.  Trying to make a peaceful world for him." Alan gave a sarcastic chuckle. "And what a job I did."

"Well you couldn't have exactly waved a magic wand, Alan."

"Believe me, when you're a parent, you try." Alan looked up into the rafters of the garage and seemingly beyond them. "As much as I want Don and Charlie to have kids of their own some day, with the world as it is now, I hope they have girls."

Colby couldn't begin to figure out what to say to that.  Alan gathered up his own wash and left the garage. Colby looked down and his half ironed shorts, scrunched them up and tossed them back on the pile of wrinkled laundry.


End file.
